Project Clarity: Tooltips

[Draco18s]

e: Nice find, Draco!

I was actually linked to it earlier in the day from a completely different forum in an unrelated thread XD

[doctorfrog]

e: Nice find, Draco!

I was actually linked to it earlier in the day from a completely different forum in an unrelated thread XD

Well, a find is a find! A lot of those icons are really descriptive and clear, and visible at lower sizes. They are a bit fantasy/silly/curvy for AI War IMO, but I think they could be reworked into more serious/square/sci-fi icons with a bit of work.

I'm not a man with a lot of time on my hands, but if this tooltip dealie becomes a serious possibility, I might take a whack at a couple icon modifications. Not that I'm a fantastic artist or anything, but why not contribute?

[Martyn van Buren]

Going back to the top of the post, in principle I'd support having more blank space in tooltips like the mockup there. Jamming text together feels efficient but it makes it much harder to read, especially if you're not reading it start to finish like a book but trying to find one specific part. That said, once you're familiar enough with the game not to look at tooltips much saving screen real estate is pretty valuable too. So I think something akin to those mockups would be more new-player-friendy but might be too intrusive to be worth it.

[RCIX]

Continuing my UI improvements:



I do think this is a better design, but looking at the abilities gives me the inkling there's a much better way to handle this (holy wow some of those are long, i had to slice and dice the attack boost one just to make it fit). This is about as much time as I can spend right now, but I'll keep thinking about how to improve it.

@Doctorfrog: I just updated my PSD in the OP to this latest one, so feel free to use that if you want.

[Martyn van Buren]

That looks much more readable than the current tooltip to me; I think on reflection i'd favor something like that as default and something like the current as a "condensed tooltips" option for low-resolution screens.

[Draco18s]

Any reason the word "Abilities" is in a smaller font size?

[RCIX]

Any reason the word "Abilities" is in a smaller font size?

I don't know the precise font size/name so I'm just rolling with Segoe UI at 12 point IIRC.

[RCIX]

Soooo... Yeah. Should I toss this into Mantis?

[zebramatt]

Soooo... Yeah. Should I toss this into Mantis?

Couldn't hurt.

[doctorfrog]

Continuing my UI improvements:



I do think this is a better design, but looking at the abilities gives me the inkling there's a much better way to handle this (holy wow some of those are long, i had to slice and dice the attack boost one just to make it fit). This is about as much time as I can spend right now, but I'll keep thinking about how to improve it.

@Doctorfrog: I just updated my PSD in the OP to this latest one, so feel free to use that if you want.

Thanks, I'll take a look at it this weekend!

One thing that kinda bugs me is that sometimes tooltips stack, and they already run off the screen as it is (cloaked ships and multi-mark ships of the same suit in the planetary summary), and using up more vertical space is going to exacerbate that.

Also, I think we can make better use of some of the empty space, though I might just need to get used to it.

I honestly don't have a problem with the tooltips as they are, but that doesn't mean they couldn't use improvement. May as well try to influence that improvement 

edit: Looking more at the utility of these tooltips, I'm seeing more and more the troubles we're going to have stacking things both vertically and horizontally.

Part of the reason why the tooltips look the way they do, is because they need to grow and shrink based on the detail for the given unit. The details for a unit can change even as you hover over them, based on health, engine damage, etc.

Leaving a lot of negative space in a design "just in case" you need it kinda bugs me. The current design, though it is crowded, is simple enough to expand and contract without taking up too much vertical space, and is color coded so you can differentiate between sections instead of using up space with horizontal rules and so forth. It's a pretty basic but efficient design IMO.

Still, it's a worthwhile exercise to see if we can improve upon it. I'll see if I can't put together a competing mock up by Sunday.

[Draco18s]

edit: Looking more at the utility of these tooltips, I'm seeing more and more the troubles we're going to have stacking things both vertically and horizontally.

Part of the reason why the tooltips look the way they do, is because they need to grow and shrink based on the detail for the given unit. The details for a unit can change even as you hover over them, based on health, engine damage, etc.

Try taking the design you quoted and make it so that the selected unit has 100,000,000 health.  It won't fit.

[LaughingThesaurus]

edit: Looking more at the utility of these tooltips, I'm seeing more and more the troubles we're going to have stacking things both vertically and horizontally.

Part of the reason why the tooltips look the way they do, is because they need to grow and shrink based on the detail for the given unit. The details for a unit can change even as you hover over them, based on health, engine damage, etc.

Try taking the design you quoted and make it so that the selected unit has 100,000,000 health.  It won't fit.

What if, however, you just omitted the max health of the unit? I don't see why that necessarily needs to be there in the heat of combat. If you look at a unit and see it's at 100,000 out of 100,000,000 health, you'll be like "Oh, snap, it's really low on health". But, if the game just gives you the number "100,000 [1%]" then that's just about equally telling of the unit's relative health.

I'm totally behind this project, though, for tooltips. I feel, like my brother does, that the unit tooltips definitely need cleaning up. I can see through the complex, cramped array of stats, but so many people could be put off by that.

Something I wonder about is unit range. Tell me, anyone who plays on a high level, do those range numbers mean anything to you? I mean... yeah, that missile frigate example has 10,000 range. But, 10,000 whats? Feet? Yards? Cubic Inches? Do I need to get out my cosmic ruler or yardstick to measure that out? Do I need to know the number for ranges, when I can just press 'z' to see it on screen, in the most relevant possible way? If something could be done to display each range (like, attack boosts, dampening, etc) easily when you press Z, you could save space on range as well in the tooltip. That'd do a lot to shorten ability names.

[eRe4s3r]

phew...

I am too lazy to make my own mockups for this ;p So..

The top bar is wasting space, way too much space.

First of all, why do we display the 24/s and 120/s for resource costs smaller. Is this a remnant of the eco change? We have a flow based economy, the full resource cost is unimportant, the sustained cost is important (meaning the rate should be relevant, the actual cost only secondary figure)

Secondly, The resource / Energy / Time / Cap thing can be moved upwards into a padded Tab so that it becomes

Missile Frigate - RCIX | 24/s (200) | 120/s (1000) | 200 | 00:09 | Cap: 98 |#######

for higher numbers

Missile Frigate - RCIX | 24/s (74k) | 120/s (744k) | 50k | 00:09 | Cap: 98 |#######

Primary directive, if you got numbers larger 999 to show, you are doing it wrong. And I remember we had this talk already, I still think we have a health number inflation problem, if the first thought is how does 100000000 fit inside, then you are ignoring the core problem, namely that such a HP value should be done via armor multipliers, and not by raw numbers. ^^

Note the ###'s thats the farthest the tooltip will ever stretch to the right. This has to be a fixed size. Based on this, you can now arrange every other piece of information below.. Also, you should think about shading and background. The name/player part needs to be visibly different from the rest.

For everything below this I haven't got an opinion yet. What really needs to be said though is that sometimes less is more. Get rid of those ugly commas. Commas have absolutely no place in a GUI, it has to be dots OR they have to be visually different (fainter) from the number. And they need to blend in properly. The main reason why the mockup still looks kinda "untidy" is solely the commas. Look at all these numbers, they look like they are damaged (visually)

Also stuff like % values need to be slightly brighter than the number itself, if you have a percent value. Because percent is important. The actual number, is not.

Look at my Drox GUI mockup for ideas, but generally speaking I like where this is going. But it is still miles away from "polished" Kudos for the effort though

Also, omitting Health raw number is something worth trying. It is not a relevant value in the game.

Also, agreed on range being pointless. No idea what range even means in the game. I only know its more or less than something else.

And shortening ability descriptors should be done as well. Lots of superflous wording there.

By the way, we need all possible ability and immunity/armor combinations find the one thats longest and most annoying and design the tooltip around that space wise. Yes, that means thinking first how to make that large and annoying unit less large and annoying (tooltip wise)

[RCIX]

Oh hey, there you are.

Good points. Now, who's up for shoveling through a few dozen throwaway games to find that long tooltip?

(drox gui mockup??? Link please)

[eRe4s3r]

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10939.msg108160.html#msg108160

It is.. not really all that relevant for a tooltip discussion ;p I admit.. but meh